IsNear — Proximity Social Network

Overview

IsNear is a proximity-based social networking MVP — an app for discovering and connecting with people nearby in real time, built around geolocation and privacy-conscious profile controls.

The Problem

A lot of social apps connect you to people you already know, or to strangers with no sense of physical proximity at all. I wanted to explore the middle ground: real-time, location-aware discovery that still gives users meaningful control over who can see them and when.

What I Built

I built a functional MVP covering the core loop: nearby-user discovery, customizable profiles, and location-based interaction flows, backed by real-time geolocation matching. Privacy was a first-class concern rather than an afterthought — users get explicit controls over visibility, location sharing, and how they can be discovered.

Key Features

• Real-time, geolocation-based proximity matching between users.
• Customizable user profiles built for quick discovery.
• Granular privacy controls over visibility and location sharing.
• A location-aware interaction flow for connecting with nearby users.

Challenges

Balancing "useful" against "invasive" was the constant tension. A proximity app is only interesting if it shows you relevant people nearby, but that same feature is exactly what makes location-based social apps feel unsafe if privacy isn't designed in from the start. Most of the product decisions came back to that trade-off.

What I Learned

This project pushed me to think about privacy as a design constraint, not a settings-page checkbox — it shapes what data you collect, how long you keep it, and what you default to showing. That's a lens I've carried into every user-facing project since.